⇨ POLARIS

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone!
When: Days 102 - 109
Where: Polaris
What: With the Ringmaster kidnapped and the rest of the carnival imprisoned, characters find themselves at the mercy of a Winter Fae called the Mother of Invention.
Warnings: Graphic experimentation in places.

TRIALS & TRIBULATION↴ After a day of cleansing and processing, where all the belongings and attire of their old lives are stripped away and replaced with something newer and more form fitting, the former members of the carnival will find themselves let loose into the Farm for the first time. A sizable green area, filled with orchards growing inorganic looking fruits and field ready for tending, the Farm is where they will be spending their days for the forseeable future. Food and drink are no longer needed, and so every day is an endless cycle of work. Technicians are seen only when necessary, and when being taken from your place of work to your lonesome cells at night. Every day, there are new postings on the "Production Board", where various dire sound scientific trials ask for subjects. The majority won't be forced, at least not yet, but the system is at work to push its participants to the brink and force their hand. After all, volunteers make the best subjects. ► PRODUCTIVITY: As explained elsewhere, characters will be forced to compete to attain enough Productivity Point to be considered Satisfactory. There are literally not enough points to go around for everyone to attain this, which means that at least some people will be deemed "Below Expectations" by the end of the first four-day cycle. What this means has yet to be discovered, but the Technicians have grimly warned against it. Productivity involves many tasks, including orchard picking, tilling, planting, harvesting, watering, maintenance, and more. Any task you can think of that would take place on a plantation is applicable here. Beyond that, the Production Board awaits you, offering precious Productivity Points in exchange for your cooperation. How you become Satisfactory is up to you, but it's every person for themselves. Only one person can turn in the credit for harvesting or preparing fields, and while you can certainly try to help others by letting them take credit for your work, it's a sure fire way to fall behind the herd, especially if you are already in a low Classification. Fruits and fields will miraculously grow overnight, and will be ready for a new day when you are. You've been told not to eat anything you harvest, but right now you aren't hungry anyway. ► POLARIS BY NIGHT: During the night, you are left alone to your thoughts and maybe an annoying roommate. Solo or in pairs, the entire night will be spent in small sleep pods, as shown on the locations post. Is it possible to sneak out? It doesn't seem like it is, but who is to say? The real question is if you want to dare to try. There is one hour of rest before and after seven hours of darkness. Even if you don't usually have to sleep, you'll find yourself oddly weary and inclined to rest. Supernaturally, almost. ► PARTICIPATION: Sometimes participation in experimental trials is manditory, sometimes it isn't. You are free to handwave your character having been pulled aside for minor examinations, such as blood tests or aura scans. Each time, you will be pulled into a separate part of the station and analyzed by a Technician and heavily automated machinery. Anymore more complex than basic check-up level tests will be posted about in a section called "TRIALS" in the body of the post below.

Comments

[alphudo]

Meanwhile, that was Yuusei's first experience with the Huntsman. It wasn't a fun one, and all things considered he probably got out otherwise unscathed. Just aside from. Y'know. The dying part.

...shit, does Papyrus know about that? Maybe it's evident from the couple new changes Yuusei happens to have now, but it occurs to him that Papyrus was definitely out of sight when the Ringmaster immolated.

Still, though, he nods and tries to lean a little further into the conversation to distract him from such. "Yeah, it's not bad for me, although... I know others are definitely struggling here." His mind immediately goes to Carly and Yuugo, and the numerous others he's seen have issues with the labour demands that he's only recently been able to register.

There's always the possibility that the amount of work available will dwindle, or that the amount of points provided for such tasks decreases over time. It's a scary thing, for what will happen to them then?

"I... hate to admit it, but I'm rather interested in what they do." He coughs and backpedals. "N-not so much the biological experimentation, but the technology is just so fascinating... The trials aren't the most pleasant thing, but the mere opportunity to just glimpse at their methods..."

He bites his lip.

"...I don't mean to get too excited about all this, especially with our current predicament... Do forgive me if I seem... happy about it. I guarantee you, it's far from that, the things I feel about this place."

[spaghettimonster]

No, Papyrus neither knows nor suspects; he'd been panicked and fleeing at the time, and one of the tricky things with everyone's ongoing changes from exposure to fae magic is how they all change at different paces. With Yuusei's drastic early change to a taur body, and continued slower changes, it's anyone's guess whether his eyes changed in the usual way.

"No, that's good! Enthusiasm for learning isn't bad," Papyrus reassures him. "We'll need to learn as much as we can, to find a way out..."

Since they can't count on magic of their own, or the Ringmaster coming to their aid, any time soon.

"If that stuff interests you, you should dive in! So long as you remember to help when you can, anything you can do is a good thing."

[alphudo]

This does make Yuusei feel leagues better about his interest in Polaris' technology. Having even an abstract grasp of what it's capable of could prove useful in the near future. He'll try to pay more attention to what's going on. This sort of knowledge would be nice to have either way, even if they did all still have their magic, for Yuusei had none at all to begin with.

"Yeah, I'll see what I can find out." It's here that his face contorts for a moment, like he's been burned with a cigarette drawn across his body. "Ah, the way they sever and study limbs is pretty incredible, if you ask me." It's here that he turns and deliberately draws attention to his lack of a tail, pointing to the metal disk bookending the shortened stump.

"It hardly hurt at all when they did it, and there wasn't any blood; it took me a moment to realise they were even done. Granted, I can still feel all of the things they're doing to the part I'm missing, and I don't know if there's a way to keep that from happening while allowing things to remain mess- and pain-free, but that could be useful tech to have in the future."

Maybe not necessarily for a skeleton, though.

[spaghettimonster]

Papyrus has talked with Foster, and with Herbert, and a good few other folks who get genuinely enthusiastic about things he finds... unsettling, uncomfortable, and unwanted. But who is he to cast any sort of judgement on them or their happiness! Especially when it's not particularly hurting anyone, and he'd just encouraged this in the first place? But.

"Uhh. Doesn't your tail have... blood? Organs and things?" It's one thing for a skeleton to separate into pieces; though it something one shouldn't really do, it was easy enough to pry bones apart without damage to whatever's still connected. But fleshier people have a lot more complications to it.

"If that's okay..." A big if, but it doesn't seem like Yuusei's in pain about it... "Wow! That is incredible."

[alphudo]

"Yeah..." He throws another glance back at where his tail should be. "I suppose I won't know what they're... really doing until I get my tail back." Another big 'if' there, buddy. "It just seems like it could be worth attention. But I won't trouble you with that."

He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair.

"...after all of this," after all of Eden and Shabon and now this, "you're really doing alright...?"

[spaghettimonster]

"Ah... well." Papyrus smiles faintly, with a tired frown to his eyesockets.

Yuusei's right. There's been a lot of all of this, and it could reasonably get to anyone. And if his division convinced him of anything, it's that lying too much about how he's feeling doesn't do himself or anyone else enough good to warrant doing it all the time.

"If I'm to be entirely honest... I'm tired, and frightened. I hoped we'd put these bouts of danger behind us! And that two of the wonders would be enough to avoid... this kind of thing."

Instead, the Ringmaster fell to pieces on them. He can't blame her for that, he knows how easy it was to do, but the timing was pretty terrible.

[alphudo]

Yuusei's eyes cast along toward the ground as he sits back, arms folding across his chest. He's talked to a couple others about what the carnival was like before he came along since there have been plenty of others who have been there longer than himself. He was at least around enough to know that there had to be a big shift in the way the carnival functions to prepare for all of this. It's hard to get a good frame of reference as to how good they normally are at avoiding such dangers.

"The Queen's Miracles, right?" One of the things they went to Eden for. He knows that much, though the rest has been hard to follow. "...As far as I can tell, one of them was broken, and I don't even know what the other is." A frown crosses his face. "...I suppose if nothing else, the Ringmaster wielding them in pieces as she was may have only been worse for us." Yet still...

It's all just... really unfortunate.

[spaghettimonster]

Papyrus nods in confirmation; wonders, miracles, there's a lot of words they can use for the things, and the proper name is far from the only one.

"Maybe not worse... I don't know if not using them would have made a difference, to using them badly. But wielding herself in pieces probably didn't help."

That felt a little too on the nose, for what went wrong, and he glances aside and away for a moment. And he notices motion, as the technicians start singling people out to escort to their holding cells for the evening's respite. The weary demeanors of several people less used to all this physical labor, the wincing movements of those who've been put through grueling and still-painful trials... It's enough that he sighs.

"Really, you should have seen her in our first few big troubles! She turned into a big dragon, flashy and powerful, and... well, she made very short work of some very scary people. The, uh, lethal kind of short work." His voice falters a little bit at that point. "Not ideal, by any means... but it did save lives, and the people she took down really didn't want to be friends."

[alphudo]

"I guess my only concern... is if using them poorly would have resulted in us losing them." Their defeat would have stung infinitely more if they did.

Yuusei's eyes wash over the crowd as well, all familiar faces he feels like he doesn't know. He's been with the carnival for awhile now, and yet it's still as if he's walking among a sea of strangers, the only difference that they know his name and he knows most of theirs. Now might not be the best time to socialise with strangers, but he considers trying to strike up a conversation with someone he doesn't know well. In the future, that is.

Everyone is here for one reason or another. Some of them, as he understands it, have contracts for rule-breaking or property damage; many others are here by their own will, after something otherwise unattainable. Everyone, however, has to have placed a certain trust in the Ringmaster by this point to have gotten this far. He glances back to Papyrus.

"...sometimes things like that are necessary. It's not ideal, for sure... But if it was anything like what we went up against in Shabon," anything like what he went up against in his own world, "then it can't be helped. You can mitigate the damage, but ultimately people will get hurt because someone insists there should be fighting, so to limit that, I think, is a noble enough goal in its own right."

He hopes his next question will at least alter the mood somewhat.

"...Papyrus, why are you here?"

[spaghettimonster]

Papyrus lets the subject shift, because on the question of the wonders? Search him. As far as he knows they did lose the wonders, whether it was literally or functionally - pieces might be scattered through people like Steven or Strange, or the bulk of one may be hidden away in the Carnival's moon, but they don't really have access to them. It's disheartening to dwell on... And the notion of necessary killing isn't much better.

Instead Papyrus listens to that topic-changing question, and the crease of bone above his eyesocket that serves for an eyebrow quirks up as he smiles a little bit. Ruefully, more than anything.

"I assume you don't mean here, in this farm... as the answer to that is the same as for everyone." They all got captured as one big happy family, for given values of happy or family. "If you mean here, with the carnival? I think I began to tell you that before... I'm trying to save people and free my kingdom, back home, so nobody there needs to die. Or, or kill each other."

Because maybe it's necessary sometimes, but a lot of the time it isn't, if one can just find the way around. And removing the motivations for hurting anyone - needing a soul for freedom by getting freedom without it, fear of the unknown monsters' powers by getting to know the humans - is the best way to do it.

"In but a few weeks, I would have had the freedom part all settled. But, there's a whole mess of time looping back and erasing things, and..."

Visor-hidden technicians come back from the hall to the holding cells, indicating another person to follow and be escorted away to their home for the night. A few of the more enthusiastic - or desperate - continue working at some task on the farm, or wave for a technician to recognize it and credit their labor.

He hesitates, jaw chattering ever so lightly as he admits, "...I can't go home, without risking forgetting all this. And leaving my brother alone, again." It's just not to be done.